The Cambridge Companion to the Scottish Enlightenment

by Alexander Broadie

The second edition of this Companion presents a philosophical perspective on an eighteenth-century phenomenon that has had a profound influence on Western culture. A distinguished team of contributors examines the writings of David Hume, Adam Smith, Thomas Reid, Adam Ferguson and other Scottish thinkers. Their subjects range across philosophy, natural theology, economics, anthropology, natural science, and law and the arts, and in addition, they relate the Scottish Enlightenment to its historical context and assess its impact and legacy. The result is a comprehensive and accessible volume that illuminates the richness, the intellectual variety and the underlying unity of this important movement. This volume contains five entirely new chapters on morality, the human mind, aesthetics, sentimentalism and political economy, and eleven other chapters have been significantly revised and updated. The book will be of interest to a wide range of readers in philosophy, theology, literature and the history of ideas.

Genres: Philosophy, History, Ebooks, Nonfiction, Scotland

366 pages, Paperback

First published April 10, 2003

About the author

Alexander Broadie FRSE is a Scottish philosopher and emeritus professor of logic and rhetoric at Glasgow University. He writes on the Scottish philosophical tradition, chiefly the philosophy of the Pre-Reformation period, the 17th century, and the Enlightenment.

Broadie attended the Royal High School, Edinburgh, the University of Edinburgh (MA), Balliol College, Oxford (MLitt), and the University of Glasgow (PhD, DLitt). He was Henry Duncan prize lecturer in Scottish Studies, Royal Society of Edinburgh (1990 - 1993), and has been a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh since 1991. As Gifford Lecturer in Natural Theology at Aberdeen University in 1994, he delivered a series of Lectures published under the title The Shadow of Scotus: Philosophy and Faith in Pre-Reformation Scotland (1995). Since demitting his professorship of logic and rhetoric at Glasgow University (held from 1994 to 2009) he has been honorary professorial research fellow there, mainly researching 17th-century Scottish philosophy.

In 2007 Broadie was awarded the degree of DUniv honoris causa by Blaise Pascal University at Clermont-Ferrand in recognition of his contribution to Franco-Scottish collaboration in the field of the history of philosophy.

Broadie's A History of Scottish Philosophy (2009) was named Saltire Society Scottish History Book of the Year. In July 2018 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Eighteenth-Century Scottish Studies Society, and in 2020 was appointed honorary vice-president of the Saltire Society in recognition of his contribution to Scottish philosophy.

Reviews

[Chelsea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read sections on moral philosophy. Difficult reading.

[Craig Bolton]

The Cambridge Companion to the Scottish Enlightenment (Cambridge Companions to Philosophy) by Alexander Broadie (2003)

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I gave this book away. I totally regret that.